Scrumbles Grain Free Complete Wet Dog Food: Duck review

The duck tray tops the range in our Outstanding band and the other three follow close behind in Excellent. So little separates them that you are picking an animal, not a quality level. The typical adult tray in this strong category earns an Excellent reading too. The fair way to hear the placement is that Scrumbles is holding a good line in a good field.

What lifts the range is the front of the list: a named animal at 70%, nothing hidden behind a category term, and an energy figure printed on every label.

Ingredients, as declared: 70% Duck, 9% Carrots, Minerals, 3% Apple, Slippery Elm 0.01%, Calories: 130kcal/100g

The 70% headline is the same on all four trays, and it is one named animal each time, with no meat and animal derivatives anywhere on any of the lists. Protein converts to between 34.5% and 38.0% of dry matter depending on the recipe, and fat lands between 32.1% and 40.0%. That is a meat-led analysis by wet food standards.

Behind the meat there is very little. Carrots do most of the vegetable work, at 5% on the chicken and turkey trays and 9% on the duck. Green beans, cranberries, apple, sweet potato and peas each appear on one recipe at 2% or 3%. Nothing here is filler pretending to be a feature, and the carbohydrate estimate ranges from 6.0% of dry matter on the duck up to 19.7% on the chicken.

Slippery elm closes each list. It is a mucilage-rich bark with a long history of settling an unsettled stomach. At 0.1% it is a small, kindly touch. The meat is the reason, and the analysis keeps the weight where it belongs.

The added panel is short but every line is dosed. Vitamin A comes at 2,250 IU, vitamin D3 at 328 IU, vitamin E at 26mg and biotin at 0.06mg, with zinc 24mg, iron 12.5mg, copper 2.5mg, manganese 2mg, iodine 0.45mg and selenium 0.04mg. Selenium comes in as sodium selenite, the commoner of the two allowed in pet food.

One small thing to notice in the recipe's favour: every tray prints its own calories, from 130 kcal per 100g on the duck to 148 on the salmon. That is denser than the 97 kcal per 100g a typical adult wet food carries, so portions here run smaller than most of the wet shelf.

Duck at 70%, with carrots at 9% and apple at 3%, the most generous vegetable share in the range. It is the leanest on carbohydrate at 6.0% of dry matter and the richest in fat at 40.0%, and its slippery elm is printed at 0.01% where the other three read 0.1%.

£5.24 a kilo, the same figure on all four recipes, in 395g trays sold in packs of 7, 28 and 42.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat between 568 and 646 grams a day depending on the recipe, working out at between £2.97 and £3.39. That works from roughly 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate, 110 × bodyweight^0.75.